


Care and Feeding of T'hy'la

by CelestiaTrollworth



Series: Aunt Lia's Command Academy [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humor, Pon Farr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestiaTrollworth/pseuds/CelestiaTrollworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The command staff of the Enterprise takes a chance to visit Spock's aunt's flagship during the Federation's yearly conference, and the Admiral passes along her wisdom...sort of. This is actually Part 2 of this series, but "I Won't Get Into A Bar Fight" needs some tweaking.</p><p>(The Carbon Creek is a brand-new ship the Admiral managed to steal from the Romulans, but that's another story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Care and Feeding of T'hy'la

Care and Feeding of _T'hy'la_

 

The emergency call from a disabled civilian transport a few hours off the Centauri system caught the _Enterprise's_ officers by surprise after breakfast on the Vulcan vessel _Carbon Creek_. Most of the officers had already gone back to their own ship, but Kirk, Spock and Uhura had been visiting with Spock's father while they had the chance. He had just beamed back down to the Federation Conference's annual vote and they were touring the new ship's bridge when _Rising Sun_ asked for a tow and medical assistance. Captain T'Maekh perked up at the chance to have work besides waiting around the conference. “Would you three come along? The _Enterprise_ is supposed to stay here, but you have very good staff on watch and I'd like to have someone aboard who speaks good Standard if we need it. You can be comfortable and out of the way in the wardroom if you don't want to stay up here.”

“Besides,” Admiral T'Lia said, “we haven't had time to talk for ages.” _And you're all family._ Kirk could hear it. “My _t'hy'la_ Rai is on the _Seleya_ and they're also responding, and you keep wanting hints on being a captain. Half a day is plenty of time for Aunt Lia's Command Seminar.”

“It's the only one we're likely to get,” Uhura agreed. “With what happened, Starfleet can't even convene one this year because the few cadets who qualify are in the field and so is the staff that would teach. We graduated without the last half-semester of regular work as it was.”

“I just feel as if we missed material that's going to be essential. I mean...it's obvious to me, because two years ago I thought I was ready to jump in that chair...”

“...even when it was supposed to be mine,” Spock muttered. “ _Sa'mi_ always liked you best.”

“Well...you did try to kill Jim _twice_ ,” the admiral said cheerfully. Her nephew conceded the point with a tiny sigh. “You know where you belong. With that in mind, let's take the hint and leave this excellent, not that I'm prejudiced, captain to her work. I should get out of my civvies at some point.” She went off in her white gown and old blue bathrobe, returning in less than ten minutes in gray fatigues, carrying her month-old baby. “Lhairre's having a time with the revised hyperwarp settings, but between him and Courig they almost have it. Ta'an will be working with her _sa'mi_ before she knows it.”

“Ta'an,” Uhura said. “Another word for 'gift'...?”

“A great, valuable one. We didn't think we could have any more.” The baby seemed determined to investigate all of her mother's clothing, including chewing on her collar pips. “We should have named her Jaws.--This is the best part of being back on this side of the Zone. On a Romulan ship, you wear your heavy body armor in case of literal backstabbing. Over here, we Vulcans have always been known for spending the day in what amount to pajamas and bathrobes.”

“I can't help noticing how many women aboard have babies,” Kirk remarked. “Repopulation has to happen quickly, but isn't that difficult?”

“Not if you're Vulcanoid. On _that_ side, you take your family with you so they're not targets. They may get killed with you in space, but they're not hostages. Over here, we're officially not warships, we're heavily armed research vessels, so of course our families are here. There's something neither you nor Spock is likely to do, Jim—give birth on the bridge of a starship.”

Uhura stared. “You didn't!”

“Not quite, but it was close. I had to apologize to Amanda because I didn't understand it isn't like that for humans. Among hard-planet species, survivors' genes make the rules. If we can get pregnant, the wait is nearly always uneventful for the mother and the birth itself is under our conscious control, so it's nearly painless, just awkward and messy. The doctors are mostly for the babies. Most of us take a few days to help the little one adjust to life on the outside, but if we have to we can go right back to work, preferably after we get a shower. Ordinarily, a mother and child can agree on a good schedule. T'Maekh there didn't get her name by accident.”

“Hothead?”

“Exactly. I agreed that she could be born, but we were suddenly called to a crucial extraction. I was trying to get her to wait, which is still as useful as negotiating with a supernova. Finally my Rai came up to the bridge. I'm fairly certain ' _Shaoi ben,_ Rai, you have the conn, I'm going to sickbay' was all one word. Now mind, Rai's been in my life almost as long as Lhairre, but he yelled 'I'm not cleaning THAT up. Go! Go!' and threw me bodily into the lift.”

“After what you and he have seen, I wouldn't anticipate it would have been any worse,” Spock said.

“Romulan criteria: you can't say you're _t'hy'la_ until you've bled all over each other, carried each other out of messes, been called on the carpet together and had to explain why you're in their bed.”

“Bingo,” Kirk sighed. “Wait...why _were_ you in Rai's bed? Remember,we've met him.”

“Back when I was chief engineer on what is now the _Green Sands,_ we had just seized the ship a week or so before and were trying to understand the way the Klingons used core refrigeration. I had my back turned to the piping. The main coolant line blew, the whole force hit me and I barely suppressed the gasp that would have killed me. I fell down into clean air. Lhairre was up on the catwalk with his protective gear, so he was all right. Rai dove in holding his breath, grabbed me, yanked my clothes off, ran across the hall to his quarters, threw me onto his bed and ran back to grab a respirator and help Lhairre take care of the leak. Fire suppression and the medic got there while I was coming to. Engineering was on fire, my clothes were in the hallway and I was passed out naked on my friend's bed. The lesson is?”

“Expect the unexpected?”

“Wear a protective suit even when you don't expect to need it?”

Spock had it. “Be prepared to explain your actions at all times, especially when circumstances are not as they appear.” The baby reached for him. After a moment's deliberation, he reached out and took her onto his lap, where she began to investigate his sleeve stripes.

“Or have plausible deniability, depending on the actual circumstances.” She gave Kirk a raised eyebrow and slight crooked grin that, properly translated from Vulcan, approximated his own. “It's not that unusual to find _t'hy'la_ in our family because of the high psi even among males. Bonds, marital or friendship, among adepts are much stronger and break only with enormous trauma to...” she must have felt pain, because she reached over to put a hand on Spock's. “Like _that_ , yes.”

“Oh,” Uhura said, “all of you, the whole ship. What did you do?” She reached for Spock's other hand, and Kirk covered theirs with his own; if they looked like a séance, none of them cared.

Lia's voice went thin. “I was inspecting the engine room of this ship. It was not finished, but it was usable. I was standing at the console and turned to speak to Lhairre when...”

“When the world ended,” Spock whispered. The baby clung to his chest and buried her face in his neck as he bowed his head.

“The emptiness, the...when my mind came back on I was on my knees, Lhairre was upright only because the railing had caught him, Rai held both of us up with that strength of his but he was shaking. 'Out of sight,' he said, and we all staggered into the little suit-up room and got down on the floor before we could fall there. We felt all of it, even at that distance.” She suppressed a gulp, likely nausea; Kirk forced it down himself. After a couple of deep breaths, she went on. “Which brings us to the next point: your crew, your friends, your family, and what you do when they're the same people.”

“Well, at the time I was being an obnoxious jackass,” Kirk admitted. “With Earth in the balance, yes, but still...what the hell was I thinking?”

“That you had to get to Earth, fast,” Spock said. “Everything else was a means to that end.”

Kirk saw Uhura think for a moment, then without warning her left hand snapped up and cracked him across the jaw. “Is that better?”

He rubbed the spot. “Oddly enough, yes. I wish you'd have done it back then.”

“I would have, but Sarek kept stepping back and forth in front of me to keep me from it.”

Lia suddenly needed a mug of tea, which allowed her to turn her back. “Not your place to intervene. They were dominance fighting, you weren't supposed to break in and he wasn't supposed to let you. Furthermore, you couldn't have stopped them, as I believe you found out later.”

Out of nowhere, Spock caught Kirk's eye and came within a hairsbreadth of smiling with a new and absolute honesty. “If I _really_ wanted it,” he said, “I'd have taken it back.”

“And if you really wanted it, even now, I'd give it back to you.” A thought occurred that needed spoken. “If, one of these days, I'm out of my mind and _need_ you to take it...”

The eyes still locked on his. “I will.”

“Ah,” Lia nodded, “you _do_ understand. Have you heard some of Prime's better stories about you two? I have no idea whether the exact circumstances will recur, but they are instructive. Let me set out one more unfortunate question for you, drawn from my experience--” she detached the lunging baby from Spock's hair and took her back. “ _Ko'fu'kam_ , thank you for reminding us it didn't work out that way, and you are indeed a _ta'an_.--You have already seen him die. At the time, you had no idea that he might be revived.”

Kirk said “I don't remember those two weeks. Do I want to?”

“No,” Spock looked at the table again. “You do not.”

“When you were almost conscious, nobody wanted that to last long,” Uhura agreed. “By the time they let you wake up, the burns were much better.” She had not let go of Spock's hand, nor did he seem disposed to remove it from hers. “That's going to keep happening, isn't it?”

“Yes, but so will the ridiculous things that make you laugh when you're lucky to be old.”

“I think we need to hear some of those now,” Kirk admitted. “All of us.”

“Very good, you do speak for those around you when you know you should. So long as you continue to think about the real question, which is _What if, after?”_ She looked around, gaining silent assent. “Embarrassing _t'hy'la_ stories, fine. Anytime a Vulcan elder starts with 'This is the way of our people,' you're about to be humiliated in public.”

“But surely there are times when--” Spock began in mild protest, and clearly went down a mental list. “There's...all right, there aren't.”

“Exactly. From the first day of school to the _kahs-wan_ to your bonding to mandatory fun at festivals, 'This is the way of our people' is the clue that you're going to be a nice shade of leaf green by the end of the day. You may also be drunk, half drowned, heavily bandaged or walking funny. At times like that, if you have that kind of bond with a friend and-or a lover, you can at least tell the stories when you're old and make your kids turn funny colors too.”

“Why do I have the feeling,” Uhura smiled, “that I might need this information?”

“I hope! The great shame of Vulcan, people call it. The disgrace. The Awful Time. The curse. It's none of those if you have sense, all of them if you don't, and for the past several hundred years we haven't. When the powers that were decided that--” she feigned a whisper, “s-e-x was too emotional and undignified, we set ourselves up for explosions every seven years. That's where your closest friends come in, because when you're in that condition you don't want anybody else within a hundred yards of you and nobody else wants to be there either. Lhairre and I got Earth-married before we did everything, and we were already really solidly bonded, but on Vulcan, I was all but a prostitute because up on Seleya I admitted to not being a virgin.”

“Wait,” Uhura giggled, “you really _said_ \--?”

“Ad a lot more besides. It was the day before spring break. I was in graduate school at Penn State, he and Rai were at Carnegie-Mellon, we had been bonded for two years and yes, it did happen like a bolt out of the blue. Hmm, hit a nerve, did I?”

“Oh...sort of.” Uhura glanced sidewise at Spock, whose ear tips had turned mint.

Kirk got up just as Lhairre started in. “And where are _you_ going, Captain?”

“Uh...I assumed they'd want me to leave.”

The thick-shouldered Vulcan engineer smirked. “Oh, nonono. You get your not unattractive rump back in that seat.--Hm, Rai must be closer than I thought. Unless I misconstrue greatly, you and Dr. McCoy will be escorts, and it would help if you didn't cause a scandal such as Prime explained to all of us by way of warning. His Jim nearly got himself killed when neither he nor Bones had all the information they needed. It never did make sense not to talk about mating season when it happens to everybody. Go on, Lia.”

“My dissertation on transporter field fluid dynamics was my best work ever _._ I had been making huge progress on it every day and was finishing far ahead of schedule, really just tweaking citations. Window open, beautiful day, birds singing, I'd have worked outside in the sun but couldn't concentrate. Meditate? No help. Lhairre? There. He was sick and wanted me with him. Just to be sure that was it and not someone else in the family, I checked in with _sa'mi_ because he would talk to me.”

Kirk had finally met Sarek's father. He had seen week-old kittens with more abrasive personalities. It didn't help that the man looked so much like a more fragile version of Spock. “Your father seems like such a thorough pacifist, but he's the one who doesn't have a problem with you.”

“He's forever treating me like The Princess. The most he's ever said to me is 'Are you sure, _ko'fu'kam?_ ' Marry your bondmate in a Terran ceremony? 'Are you sure? All right, send me the paperwork and I'll enter it on the books.' Devastate half the Romulan Star Empire fleet and steal the ships you used? 'That was unanticipated, _ko'fu'kam,_ but I'm pleased you managed to avoid excessive bloodshed while you brought those people home.' Call him out of a meeting to make sure nothing terrible has happened? 'I am well, _ko'fu'kam_ , are you? You should contact Lhairre in a more substantial way than your bond. You'll need travel plans. I will run interference with your mother.' Well, of course we'd need travel plans with spring break coming up if he felt better by morning.”

“If it was warm enough,” Lhairre added, “we were going to see how far we could hike the Appalachian Trail in a week. I've always wondered whether we would have been arrested or eate by wildlife considering how much attention we'd have paid to our surroundings.”

“I nearly did complain in really rude terms. Still, it was _sa'mi_ , and I couldn't snap back at him even though I really wanted to bite the head off the crow that was yelling outside the window. My big mouth made my next mistake, asking what he meant and hearing him nearly die of embarrassment. 'See what Lhairre's up to,' he said, and that embarrassed him even more. 'Oh, dear, I mean...there, I booked the diplomatic shuttle. This is the way of our people.”

“See? The warning.” Lhairre juggled the baby.

“'Use the transporter and go to him while your brothers and I bring the shuttle to the consulate in Pittsburgh.' The shuttle? That thing was warp-capable and fast because I'd played with it and tuned it myself. It was a six-seater, at that. We were going to start on Mount Katahdin, not the backside of nowhere, and why would that need Mother's involvement at all? But even with my addled brain I managed to _call_ Lhairre rather than think at him. Rai answered his comm.”

Lhairre was smiling and shaking his head. “I was hallucinating that I could jump out the window and fly to State College, and Rai was sitting on me amidships so I couldn't try it. That I do remember, very clearly. Also his taking the call from her.”

“So here's the sitch: Sa'mi is acting weird we don't know why, Lhairre's brain is out to lunch and he hasn't even been into the catnip, other half of my heart Rai doesn't know why I'm snarling at him, and I think I'm being perfectly calm and reasonable when I doubtless looked like a sweaty crazy woman about to overthrow some regime or strip one or both of them naked.”

“Back up a second,” Kirk chuckled, trying to picture the three young and in that state. “Catnip?”

“Just recently, some generous Terran sent a box for the ship's cats aboard Rai's _Seleya_. It passed security because it was exactly as labeled and such a kind gesture. He opened it and inhaled and the crew had to peel him off the carpeting. All of the fleet cats are still overjoyed two months later. So, if they admit it, are a lot of the Vulcans who keep checking to be sure their local cats' supply hasn't lost its potency. A small off-duty nip is harmless, good for our kidneys and circulation and only lasts about twenty minutes. But I digress, because catnip would have helped. Rai says 'Come get him, because he's getting really fond of me and your oversexed mind in my head is making it not sound like a terrible idea,' so that was that for working on the paper.”

Lhairre chuckled and poured himself a mug of tea. “I'm about the straightest man you'll meet, and Rai is nearly asexual, but 'really fond' should be interpreted in this case as 'really fondling.' It's a good thing he's heavy and I'm not that big.”

“Why...” Kirk scratched his head. “I mean...you're arguably the most carefully civilized race in the galaxy. Why doesn't somebody, you know, do something about it?”

“Oh, they could,” Lhairre assured him. “There's medication and everything else, but the nasty truth is that we kind of like having an excuse to act out. That's the only possible explanation, because it's yet another logically illogical Vulcan thing and we _v'tosh ka'tur_ just don't get The Way Of Our People. That first one is always the worst, and you can imagine how it is for highly traditional kids who know nothing about what they're about to do and are running on pure instinct. It's bad enough when you've got a beautiful wife in State College and you're in Pittsburgh and you're only getting together every couple of weeks because of graduate school. Imagine seven years. I'd never have survived. So, on your end...?”

“Message the profs, grab my bag, I'd missed the half-hourly tram. I went on foot to Embassy Row, not quite running. It's only a couple of miles. What's that among unbelievably horny friends? The walk helped a little so I wasn't too mean to the guards. The medic on duty handed me an envelope. I didn't think I had time to listen to her about it, but she was so patient. What I thought she said was 'You'll need this, the directions are with it, give it to him as soon as you get to Pittsburgh and definitely before you get on the shuttle.' So.” She looked back at Lhairre. “And meanwhile back at the Carnegie Mellon dorm?”

“I was boiling over and Rai had an ice collar on me and was stuffing aspirin down my throat by the handful, but he didn't forget to take humiliating pictures of me all slimy and crazed. Years later I actually used those to convince somebody I was being interrogated.”

“Brothers went to get the shuttle, I went to the consulate transporter room in Pittsburgh. Lhairre was on the same floor of the building across the street, I thought about getting a running jump down the hallway—which seemed absolutely logical, mind you--but I knew their windows wouldn't open. All the way down on one elevator, cross the street—pretty sure I just walked through traffic—all the way up the other building. Rai took our luggage up to the roof and got out of my way. A- _hem_.” She giggled, which seemed entirely strange but not unbecoming. “Don't try to read medication labels in that state. I gave Lhairre all of the tranquilizers, meant for two doses for both of us. By the time we, er, were ready to leave, he was wobbling, and Rai dragged him to the roof landing pad. It would have been easy if we'd each taken an arm, but Rai was afraid of a diplomatic incident if he let me touch my husband, who by that time wasn't capable of consent or even especially sentient. Horny Jello might describe it.”

“Hmm. That's what she called the Denebian ambassador last night,” Lhairre mused.

“He was being disgusting to her and Uhura,” Kirk added, “then since he was hanging around the buffet one of the Andorians thought he was a bowl of jelly. He was injured by a cracker.”

Uhura frowned at the memory. “Yes...that and the whipped cream accident. I just got the Klingon envoy stopped before he took a spoon to the guy.”

“My brothers were appalled when we got to the shuttle, and so was my father. They had figured on two slightly obstreperous but mostly tractable tranquilized people they could fly to Vulcan fast, and what they got was a bag of noodles singing 'Feel Like Making Love' while Rai kept a big estrogen-overloaded hyper-aggressive female's arms pinned while we were jammed into that crowded shuttle. Good thing the shuttle always has cable ties and duct tape in the repair locker, but if we'd wrecked that would have been some explanation.”

Lhairre got up and moved behind Lia's chair. “I need my hands doing work that isn't rude and your shoulder still hurts.” He started to dig into her back muscles. “She argued with Sarek that she was the embassy's pilot. Right then she wasn't competent to fly a paper airplane, but he was ready to let her if it would keep her hands off me. Did you know that shuttle could do warp eight in emergency flank and they used to let you land right at the Thousand Steps?”

“I'm surprised he didn't drop me off in midair. Mother took me into the women's robing room to help me get dressed, which was hard because to change clothes you have to get _un_ dressed and putting any back on wasn't my idea of a good time. I'm naked, good enough, gimme Lhairre. As if that weren't bad enough, next I was _honored_ with lengthy Marital Advice from T'Pau.”

Everyone in the room groaned, even Spock, who managed to keep it to a sort of pale whimper. “I do not anticipate that it was a useful conversation.”

Lhairre scratched his thick grizzled hair. “I got the same lecture from her bondmate, and to this day I have no idea what thinking of Syran was supposed to do, unless that was a code word. It sounded like he was sending me off to war, not bed.”

“There was advice about 'infiltrating the castle' and 'sacred springs' and a couple of ancient military campaigns and anytime there's a reference to General T'Shaara it isn't good even if I do bear a really unfortunate resemblance to her.”

“You are much more esthetically pleasing.” Lhairre leaned his chin on the top of her head and tried for innocence as he peered down, still rubbing her neck. “On the other hand, she _is_ an ancestor, and an overbearing dictator with delusions of godhood...”

“You forgot 'tin-plated' if you're quoting Prime's Klingons,” she purred, leaning back with her eyes closed. “There was stuff about courage and fortitude in the face of humiliation and she finally got around, in a much too roundabout way, to a description of the castle about to be conquered and opening the gates before they were battered down, which would require greasing the hinges.”

Uhura put her face on the table and dissolved in hiccups. Spock looked briefly alarmed until she put a hand on his arm and he appeared to understand, even if he turned a remarkable shade of mint.

“What did you do to this elbow? It feels like you...oh, never mind, that was the drunk Klingon last night.” He kept working his way down her arm. “I got the same lecture over on the guys' side of the rocks, where Rai and Sarek were taking turns holding onto me and putting my suit on while big old Davy was holding the door shut. I already had bruises on top of bruises from getting sacked repeatedly by those three linebackers because the tranquilizers had worn off, and I couldn't talk, so the whole lecture was swimming around in my head mixed with hers. Castles? Springs? Some general who used to catch husbands for her troops from men who were out in the desert to die? Taking in bachelors in _pon farr_ might have been T'Shaara's only act of mercy, but they could have left out the part about why they needed replacements so often. I figured we were going to get to have lots of totally socially legitimate sex and the rest of that stuff would explain itself eventually.”

“Same lecture and opinion on my side. Unfortunately I not only _could_ talk but also couldn't shut up. It soaked through Lhairre's referred-to-me fever, very slowly. 'Oh. You're talking about sex. We do that all the time. He didn't have to conquer the castle, I surrendered and we co-rule. Didn't you ever hear of lube? It makes things a lot easier and more fun, especially if you get the kind that--' Might as well have detonated a nuclear weapon on the place.”

“I still don't talk much and she still can't shut up,” Lhairre added. “It works very well.”

“So once you've been through that, even if nobody challenges, you have extortion bait for the rest of your lives with one another. If you're able to look at one another after a friend as good as Rai gets you through total humiliation like that, not a whole lot can be a problem, can it? When you're on your knees because life knocked you down, and they'll always get there to help you, when you know the end might come and you're with the people you want to be there, when you need to hold a hand and you know you have one, not a lot more matters.”

“When you put it that way,” Spock said. “Fascinating.” He looked at Uhura. “But _hinges_?”

“Don't worry,” she said with a smug little smile. “I'm sure Engineering has plenty of grease.”


End file.
